Manga artist Hirohiko Araki is best known for his hugely popular JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure comic series, which began in 1986 and is still going strong today, after nearly 30 years. But now fans of the series can look forward to enjoying one of Araki’s works in a different form this fall — as a theatrical production! This is actually the first time a manga by Araki will be turned into a play, so fans are bound to be excited, but, as it turns out, it’s not a story from the JoJo series that we’ll be seeing on stage. Instead, it’s a short story with a fast-paced and bizarrely creepy plot, known in English by the title Under Execution, Under Jailbreak, and fans are already abuzz with speculation about the upcoming production!

Last December, we here at RocketNews24 gave you the scoop on manga and anime smash One Piece being adapted into a fully-fledgedkabuki play. With the performance dates coming up within a few short months, the official kabuki website Kabukibito has released a Laboon-sized amount of new details.

Although a warning before you click ahead: if you have not read or watched One Piece up until the time skip, be aware that thar be spoilers ahead!

It’s quite the summer of 90s nostalgia at the movies this year. Just this past month we had a new Jurassic Park movie, an original Pixar movie, and next month is bringing us the latest Terminator outing in the form of Terminator Genisys.

Anticipation for the film has been high in Japan, but one group you may not expect to be fans of machines killing each other seems to have taken a special liking to it. The Japanese National Bunraku Theater took the poster for the Terminator movie and transformed it into an advertisement for their traditional puppet theater, making it one of the most confusing yet oddly satisfying collaborations we’ve ever seen.

You know something is popular when it starts getting adapted into anime, drama CDs, movies and games. But maybe one of the biggest and strangest adaptations is the musical. Oddly enough, stagedmusicals are popular enough in Japan that plenty of series get live-action singing and dancing versions performed for ecstatic fans in packed theaters. If you’re not convinced that a musical means a popular title has hit the big time, how about a third musical?

That’s right, Black Butler is set for its third musical and the final cast photos have been released!

With the Naruto manga all wrapped up, we imagine a lot of fans are feeling sort of lonely. Sure, there’s an animated movie coming up, and you can still catch episodes of the weekly anime series, but with no more issues of the comic to look forward to, it must seem like the series’ cast of charismatic ninja have drifted just a little farther away.

Soon enough, though, Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura will be just a few rows of seats away from their adoring public, as the Naruto stage play is set to open this spring, and producers have just announced the cast and released the first shot in-costume photo of the star of the show.

Usually all we look for in a theater is comfy seats, a decent sound system, and good movies. If you’re really picky, you might even seek out places with a beer menu, cheap tickets, or a unique schedule. Probably the last thing on your mind would the architecture of the building–but if you’re a fan of Studio Ghibli, you’ll definitely want check out Laputa, a cinema in a building inspired by the legendary Castle in the Sky!

Osamu Tezuka‘s Astro Boy, in addition to being a historically important piece of entertainment, is also widely beloved around the world. And now, some sixty-plus years after its first inception as a manga, it’s been granted additional life on the stage, thanks to the efforts of playwright and director Natsu Onoda Power, and the folks at the Company One theater company.

Since its first performance 100 years ago, Japan’s Takarazuka Revue has been the country’s most respected theater company. While the troupe is known for its lavish costume and set designs, as well as its bombastic musical performances, its most distinctive characteristic is that the group is composed entirely of actresses, with women playing both male and female roles.

To their fans, Takarazuka actresses are the epitome of grace and poise. There are a lot of pitfalls that have to be avoided to maintain that pristine image, though, as shown by the company’s list of the 25 marks of ugly women.

We love movies. That’s not really a surprise or a secret, but it certainly is true! Whether it’s some kung-fu cop action or the latest from Ghibli, we would be hard-pressed to decline a trip to the theater. But even we have to admit that not all theater seating was created equally. Sure most of it isn’t bad, but sometimes we just wish we could bring the projector and screen home so we could lie in bed in our jammies with a bowl of popcorn and really relax. Too bad we can’t bring our beds to the theater…

Since the first performance in 2008, Sutra has been staged in 55 cities in 27 countries and has become an exceptionally popular show.

To develop and stage this awe-inspiring performance, the contemporary dance superstar Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui collaborated with 17 Shaolin monks he became acquainted with while studying at a temple in China.

The British stage production of Studio Ghibli’s 1997 animated classic Princess Mononoke, originally only intended for audiences at London’s Diorama Theatre this April, will be brought to Japan, it was announced earlier today.

For the avid reader, environment can be everything. Some people prefer to read in the silence of a library while others prefer the ambience of cafés or parks; different readers have different conditions that must be met for them to truly lose themselves in a book.

But what would it feel like if you sat, with book in hand, in the third-floor balcony of a renovated theater-turned-bookstore with high painted ceilings and crimson stage curtains still intact? That’s exactly what El Ateneo, the world’s second most beautiful bookstore, offers readers.

Our correspondent Photographer Koach recently traveled to Avenida Santa Fe in Buenos Aires, Argentina where El Ateneo is located to see the bookstore for himself.